While Kobo has been good to us and display the series info, there is still plenty of metadata they don't display. Ideally, this would be displayed by the device in the Details page of the device. But, they don't do this and it isn't likely to happen any time soon.
A way to do this is to add it to the comments/synopsis the device displays. But, I don't want to edit the comments in my calibre library to include the other tags, and the comments cannot be updated using a metadata plugboard. So, I have added an option to the "Update metadata in device library" function of the plugin. This will set the comments on the device using a template in a similar way to the jackets that can added to a book.
On the options dialog, I have added an option "Use template". This can be used when setting the comments/synopsis on the device. When it is used, instead of simply reading the comments from the calibre library and updating the database, a template will be read from your calibre configuration. This template can include any piece of metadata that is in the calibre library. This includes custom columns. The template use the same formatting rules a the jacket templates.
To use this, you need to create a file called "kobo_template.xhtml" in the "resources" directory of you calibre configuration. An example template is:
Code:
{comments}<hr/><p>{tags_label}: {tags}</p><p>{rating_label}: {rating}</p><p>{_kobo_last_read_label}: {_kobo_last_read}</p><p>Word count: {_words}</p>
This adds the tags, rating, when I last read the book and the word count to the synopsis after the usual comments. The attached screenshot shows what this looks on my Glo HD.
This does not update the book on the device or in your library. It changes the metadata in the device database and hence what is displayed in on the details page for the book on the device.
For the formatting, you should be able to use whatever you can use in the comments in calibre. Most HTML tags will be supported. You should be able to set styles on the tags, but there is no stylesheet in use. I would recommend keeping it simple. One thing I found is that any new lines in the template put an extra line in the display on the device. That is why the above example template is all one line.
I think this is going to be useful. But, as usual, I am looking for any suggestions people have. And of course, any bugs seen. I am hoping that there are none of the latter, but I haven't tried everything possible.